heart? No, I can assure you it is not; but I am obliged to! The public, the world, see the artist, but they forget the woman."
She writes to her mother from Liège, after her visit to Holland, where the King and Queen had heaped civility and presents on her:—"But all this has not brought joy, or even eaten into my heart. I am sad about many things, and a thousand times sad not to be with my dear little child. One day I shall see all those I love again, and perhaps the sincere and intense joy of that meeting will help me to forget the sorrows that pursue me since I left Paris. Write me a long letter about my little Alexander and everyone. Tell Papa, also, to keep a little corner for me in his immense property. I foresee that the wanderers will all return to the fold. I kiss you tenderly."
"Heureusment qu'il reste à tout, mortel une certaine dose d'esperance," she says a little further on. Rachel had her roses bleues, like the rest of us. The one thing she sighed for all her life, and never obtained, was rest. To "return to the fold" and live quietly and calmly in the midst of her children and those she loved, was the illusion she cherished during all her wanderings over the face of the globe. To save a little more money, to make her children a little richer, to buy a larger house, or invest in a choicer property than the one she possessed—to surround herself and them with a little more luxury—this was the bright-hued bubble she pursued and seized, only to find it break in her hand, its brilliant colours disappearing with the health and strength that gave them consistency. In the whole history of art there is no tragedy sadder than this poor Rachel longing for the tranquil joys of life, but never attaining them, until her very aspiration became a
